Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
They don't currently have such a group, because with the region's dominant military, they have no need to. They've taken away Palestinian land/rights through military action and with bulldozers. As well, early in the state's history, there were the Irgun and Lehi groups, who were very active in capturing and executing British and Arabs, including the attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassin where more than a hundred Arab civilians were killed, and the King David Hotel bombing, which killed 91, some of whom were military personnel, many of whom were innocent civilians. Some accounts suggest that the slaughter of the villagers of Deir Yassin (who had, incidentally, agreed to a policy of non-aggression with Israel prior to being killed), was a major factor in prompting other Palestinians in the region to flee their homes and become refugees. The Arabs had equally horrific attacks during the era (particularly an attack on a medical hospital in the days immediately after the Deir Yassin attack, where the entire medical staff and many patients were killed). To portray either population as innocents incapable of atrocity is simply wrong.
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Just to elaborate further, the massacre at Deir Yassin was the catalyst for the surrounding arab armies to come to palestinian 'rescue'. Most civilians did abandon their homes because of exagerated fears of jewish barbarism. To help draw the surrounding arab armies to their to their side, the massacre at deir yassin was manipulated through misinformation to be even worse than it was. Palestinian arabs abandon their homes because of these fears, an unintended consequence, and have since not been allowed to return.